Moerocles was an Athenian

Athens

Athens , is the capital and largest city of Greece. Athens dominates the Attica region and is one of the world's oldest cities, as its recorded history spans around 3,400 years. Classical Athens was a powerful city-state...

 orator, native of Salamis

Salamis Island

Salamis , is the largest Greek island in the Saronic Gulf, about 1 nautical mile off-coast from Piraeus and about 16 km west of Athens. The chief city, Salamina , lies in the west-facing core of the crescent on Salamis Bay, which opens into the Saronic Gulf...

. He was a contemporary of Demosthenes

Demosthenes

Demosthenes was a prominent Greek statesman and orator of ancient Athens. His orations constitute a significant expression of contemporary Athenian intellectual prowess and provide an insight into the politics and culture of ancient Greece during the 4th century BC. Demosthenes learned rhetoric by...

, and like him an opponent of the kings Philip

Philip II of Macedon

Philip II of Macedon "friend" + ἵππος "horse" — transliterated ; 382 – 336 BC), was a king of Macedon from 359 BC until his assassination in 336 BC. He was the father of Alexander the Great and Philip III.-Biography:...

 and Alexander, and was one of the anti-Macedon

Macedon

Macedonia or Macedon was an ancient kingdom, centered in the northeastern part of the Greek peninsula, bordered by Epirus to the west, Paeonia to the north, the region of Thrace to the east and Thessaly to the south....

ian orators whom Alexander demanded to have given up to him after the destruction of Thebes

Thebes, Greece

Thebes is a city in Greece, situated to the north of the Cithaeron range, which divides Boeotia from Attica, and on the southern edge of the Boeotian plain. It played an important role in Greek myth, as the site of the stories of Cadmus, Oedipus, Dionysus and others...

, though he subsequently withdrew his demand on the mediation of Demades

Demades

-Background and early life:He was born into a poor family of ancient Paeania and was employed at one time as a common sailor, but he rose partly by his eloquence and partly by his unscrupulous character to a prominent position at Athens...

 (335 BC

335 BC

Year 335 BC was a year of the pre-Julian Roman calendar. At the time, it was known as the Year of the Consulship of Calenus and Corvus...

). We find mention of him as the advocate of Theocrines, and in the oration against Theocrines, which was once placed among those of Demosthenes

Demosthenes

Demosthenes was a prominent Greek statesman and orator of ancient Athens. His orations constitute a significant expression of contemporary Athenian intellectual prowess and provide an insight into the politics and culture of ancient Greece during the 4th century BC. Demosthenes learned rhetoric by...

, he is spoken of as the author of a decree in accordance with which the Athenians and their allies joined their forces for the suppression of piracy

Piracy

Piracy is an act of robbery or criminal violence at sea. The term can include acts committed on land, in the air, or in other major bodies of water or on a shore. It does not normally include crimes committed against persons traveling on the same vessel as the perpetrator...

. On one occasion he was prosecuted by Eubulus

Eubulus (statesman)

Eubulus, or Euboulos was a statesman of ancient Athens, who was very influential in Athenian politics during the period 355 BC to 342 BC and was notable for his abilities in managing Athenian finances....

 for an act of extortion practised upon those who rented the silver mines, and Timocles, the comic

Ancient Greek comedy

Ancient Greek comedy was one of the final three principal dramatic forms in the theatre of classical Greece . Athenian comedy is conventionally divided into three periods, Old Comedy, Middle Comedy, and New Comedy...

 poet speaks of him as having received bribes from Harpalus

Harpalus

For other uses, see Harpalus Harpalus son of Machatas was an aristocrat of Macedon and boyhood friend of Alexander the Great in the 4th century BC. Being lame in a leg, and therefore exempt from military service, Harpalus did not follow Alexander in his advance within the Persian Empire but...

. At one period of his life he had been imprisoned, though we do not know on what charge. He was afterwards the accuser of the sons of Lycurgus

Lycurgus of Athens

Lycurgus was a logographer in Ancient Greece. He was one of the ten Attic orators included in the "Alexandrian Canon" compiled by Aristophanes of Byzantium and Aristarchus of Samothrace in the third century BCE.Lycurgus was born at Athens about 396 BC, and was the son of Lycophron, who belonged...

, according to a letter ascribed to Demosthenes, but whose authenticity is debated. According to the Pseudo-Plutarch

Plutarch

Plutarch then named, on his becoming a Roman citizen, Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus , c. 46 – 120 AD, was a Greek historian, biographer, essayist, and Middle Platonist known primarily for his Parallel Lives and Moralia...

, however, it was Menesaechmus

Menesaechmus

Menesaechmus , an Athenian and an inveterate enemy of the orator Lycurgus, by whom he was impeached on a charge of impiety and convicted. When Lycurgus felt his end drawing near , he had himself brought into the council to give an account of his public conduct, and Menesaechmus was the only man who...

 on whose charge they were imprisoned. Moerocles is mentioned by Aristotle

Aristotle

Aristotle was a Greek philosopher and polymath, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. His writings cover many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, linguistics, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology...

.